When Brendan, Navigator of the seas and later among the ranks of the canonized that sit beside the Lord in Heaven, guided his curragh ashore, he was surprised and a little fearful to be greeted by three strange looking men, or so he assumed them to be. One was certainly recognizable as such, but the other two appeared to him almost more as demons, with sallow skin and thin slanted eyes that turned up even further as they smiled at his approach.

Having traversed the Great Ocean for more days than his weary mind could now remember, hounded by the angry breath of demons and confounded by sights of miraculous and strange creatures and places hence unknown, in order to reach the Isle of the Blest promised by the Saints, he was speechless. While the land undoubtedly lived up to the legends and visions, he had assumed the population to be both more dense and more...angelic.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome," the three smiling men shouted as they plunged into the surf, grasping lines that trailed in the water and dragging the curragh onto the beach. Their hands steadied him as he swung himself over the the boat's side and held him up as his knees, still feeling the undulation of the past weeks, buckled.

He was led further up the beach, past the edge of the sands and into the grassy periphery of the tidal lands that separated the shore from the burgeoning treeline further inland. A low table of intricately carved wood stood next to a small fire. On it sat three round handleless cups of delicate porcelain, to which one of the demonic-in-appearance members of this strange band quickly added a fourth, retrieved from inside a large trunk nearby, while over the fire hung a covered pot from which rose trailers of pungent steam, the sultry breath of boiling tea. Still adled by the sudden and unexpected end to his long journey, Brendan found himself, before he knew it, seated comfortably on a stool cradling a warm mug while the three men leaned eagerly forward from similar situations, scanning his face with great enthusiasm.

"Um," he said, "hello."

"Yes, yes, yes! Hello, hello!" One of the demons laughed wildly and clapped his hands, rolling his stout body back and forth on the stool.

"Calm down, Hui-Shen. You're scaring him." The admonishment came from the one man that Brendan could definitively identify as such, although he was certainly not an Irishman. His dark hair and eyes were matched by the deep hue of his skin, a rich copper color. A full black beard fell to his chest.

"I am so sorry," said Hui-Shen. "I am just so excited you are here with us, us castaways in Paradise." He made a visible effort to calm himself, but his eyes still glowed wildly. "Please allow us to make introductions, and then perhaps you may rest; we, more than any others, know the tremendous journey you have made. I am, as Isaac has said, Hui-Shen, emissary of the Son of Heaven Wu Ti, and this, as I have just said, is Isaac bar- Joshua of the land of Judah. This fellow here to my right --"

"I am capable of speech, Hui-Shen. It is just that you never pause long enough to grant me the opportunity." The third man (and already Brendan was beginning to think of them all as such, not just Isaac) spoke in a rough, guttural voice, but he rose and bowed with dignified grace, his elegant robes emphasizing a leanness of body that contrasted sharply with Hui- Shen's jolly rotundity. "I am Tomito Matsamaro, a humble fisherman and nothing like this 'diplomat', and we are most honored that you could join us . . ." He looked up, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"Brendan," said Brendan. "Of Eire and the Holy Church."

"And which direction is Eire?" asked Hui-Shen.

Brendan glanced out at the waves, thinking the answer obvious, but when Hui-Shen and the others continued waiting for his reply, he said, "Across the sea. Eastward."

Hui-Shen clapped again and laughed aloud, his whole body seeming to join in his glee.

"Then we are even again. Two from the east and two from the west."

"Again?"

"We had the company of a most cordial gentleman, one Zakarbaal of Sidon, for a short period," said Matsamaro. "But he . . . left us."

"Left?" Brendan didn't like the uncomfortable hesitation in the little man's voice, the obvious euphemism. He found his head spinning, and as much as he wished to attribute it to the length of his voyage and his own physical exhaustion, he knew further down that it was sheer bafflement that was causing the reeling sensation between his ears, a profound confusion at God's great plan and a certain sinking feeling that this was not, after all, the Isle of the Blest. "You're not angels, are you," he said quietly.

This sent Hui-Shen into gales of laughter yet again, until Brendan thought he would roll himself right off his stool and into the sand. But a stern look from Isaac brought him back from that precipitous brink, and he wiped away the tears that had been forming.

"Goodness, no, not of Heaven at all," he said. "We are, like you, men of this earth. The question," and now he truly did become serious, and Brendan could discern in his new expression a definite intellect beneath the many jocund levels. "The question is, whether this earth is of this earth; if it is, in fact, an ephemera. Since we each know we are real men, and thus cannot be dreams walking the earth, then in fact we must be men walking in a dream."

That only made Brendan's head spin more, and now the whirling was coalescing into a very sharp and very definite pain, directly behind his eyes.

"Perhaps that is enough for one day," said Isaac, noticing the way Brendan's eyes had squinted shut. "The first day is always difficult."

"Matters of this proportion and complexity are best handled like fine pottery," agreed Matsamaro. "With great delicacy and careful attention to their fragility." He gave a deferential bow toward Brendan.

"To bed then!" Hui-Shen leapt up, clapping his hands as if summoning servants, and the noise made Brendan wince again.

They all rose and filed to the far side of the odd little encampment, leaving the fire burning and the furniture where it sat, though Matsamaro carefully lifted the pot of tea from over the flame and set it in the sand, nestling the porcelain kettle carefully among the soft grains.

That night the gods of war visited their camp.

Brendan had been dreaming troubling dreams, not only in their imagery but in their implication. Demons gathered in circles, laughing at him and burning images of the Holy Cross; gargoyles and unnamed leather-winged beasts swooped and dove, clutching at his eyes and raking his cheeks with their talons; madmen and monsters roamed the landscape, snatching and killing women and children, and even when he tried to intervene his fists were insubstantial and his voice a meaningless whisper on the wind. Truth to tell, he dreamed such things often, though perhaps not with the same density and uninterrupted frequency. But if this was the Isle of the Blest, should not such minions of the Evil One be banished entirely? Can one have nightmares in Heaven?

He awoke to the sound of breakage: wood, porcelain, fabric and other materials whose particular deathcries he did not recognize. He bolted upright but was quickly pulled back down by several sets of hands, one of which clamped tightly over his mouth in anticipation of the scream which, in fact, he had been preparing to utter. The hands turned his head slowly toward their masters, and he immediately relaxed, seeing the troubled but familiar faces of his three fellows in this strange land. But they were no longer alone.

Now properly warned, the hand was removed from his mouth and he was allowed to look upon the carnage of these apparent wrathful deities that had descended so suddenly on their odd but hitherto pleasant gathering.

Hulking men, wrapped in furs and with hair like streaming fire, strode about the camp, stomping and crushing the few pieces they had not already destroyed (and it told Brendan something of his exhaustion that he had slept through the better part of the demolition). Long swords, broad and blunt-tipped, were in their hands, and the air was filled with their guttural cries as they whooped and hollered with abandon.

The four men hunkered further beneath the ridge of the dune that separated them from certain death at the hands of these newest arrivals, whom Brendan, with a touch of disappointment that surprised him, began to suspect were also mere mortals when several of them stopped to urinate in the sand. The thin grass and scrub plants hid their peering eyes from detection, leaving them free to witness the final destruction as one warrior lifted the great carved chest above his head, the sinews of his arms expanding until Brendan was sure each limb must be as big around as his waist, and flung it toward the water. While it did not really travel very far (it was, after all, quite tremendously heavy, and the four voyeurs took some satisfaction in the grunt of pain from the warrior that accompanied his feat), it fell with horrific force onto the water-hardened sand at the sea's edge, cracking and splintering along several of its sides.

With that accomplished, the warriors, after one final check that no stone had been left unturned and no object left unbroken, turned and tromped back up the beach where, now that he was looking, Brendan was shocked to see a great dragon lying in wait, half reclining on the sand and half floating in the waves. Slapping each other heartily, their loud cries now turned to loud laughter, the ravagers swung themselves onto its back, and it was not until several of the men began pushing at the beast's chest while others dipped their oars heavily into the foam that Brendan realized the beast was in fact a craft, a boat of a design not seen before, with the high prow simply carved to resemble the dreadful creature for which he had mistaken it.

He was glad to see them--war-gods and dragon-ship--go, and collapsed in a quivering heap into the underbrush, where the four men spent the remainder of the night huddling and watching the distant moonlit horizon.